In the coal stripmine Hambach in Germany, there was a machine so big that it boggles the mind.the Bagger 288:

This is the 45,000 ton Bagger 288 digger built by Krupps in Germany, and it is the largest land based machine built by humans on the face of the planet.

It’s not fast, moving at about 2 meters a minute, but boy can it shift rubble.

It can dig up 240,000 cubic meters of dirt a day. That’s about the same as a football field sized hole that’s 30 metres deep.

And why do you need a machine so absurdly big? So we can strip mine coal out of the ground, transport it hundreds of miles on massive trains and take it to power stations where we burn it to make electricity. And where does quite a chunk of this electricity go? Strangely back to the digger, as it requires 16.56 megawatts of electricity to operate. You’re not going to find a lot of solar panels on this leviathan.

Once it starts digging, it literally will not stop. Anything in its path will be chewed up, including this 60 ton bulldozer. How, I ask you, do you miss a 60 ton bulldozer?

Yea those tree huggers wanna bitch about the environment & "going green". I say screw the environment. Use all you can now. It won't be our problem in a hundred years so let the great-grandkids worry about it. If the krauts wanna dig up their country hell let 'em. They couldn't win 2 world wars so I don't think they're much of a threat to the world or the environment.

I have been inside of this Big Brutus, in Kansas USA. It (NOW) is the second largest and was built in early 1960's. Each bucket full of coal will fill THREE TRAIN CARS...WoW! Yes...USA developed this first, and they (maybe) just improved it a bit.

@Alex - Although coal and other hydrocarbon products are used to generate electricity worldwide because it is cheap than any renewable source of energy, but one day, it will finish and that day will come soon.So, I think, concentration in other forms of energy could be a better idea than making such a giant machinery for coal mine digging.